Posted by Just the other day we were wondering whether any of Mahendra Dhoni’s millions of fans had actually noticed that he doesn’t really obliterate the bowling any more.
Despite the fact that he scores far more runs now, we wondered whether he was largely buoyed by residual love from when he batted with blisteringly effective bat-spinning might.
Yesterday, Dhoni set off in nurdle mode before eventually engaging the long handle. The result was 124 off 107 balls and two textbook one-day innings in one.
It must be a constant battle for Dhoni to subdue his inner beast. Our inner beast sleeps a lot because it’s basically given up on life.
But some of his shots later when the beast was unleashed were epic.
I love his batting because he doesn’t seem to care about style or textbook when either nurdling or smashing.
He sees ball, hits ball – as though he’s never played the game before, batting like a beginner. Love it.
The beast seems to live entirely in his right hand.
On the rare occasions that my inner beast is stirred, it merely thrashes around aimlessly.
But at least next time my inner beast will probably holler “bring forth the mongoose” prior to thrashing about.
That would be an improvement.
What has happened to The Mongoose? There was all that publicity about Stuart Law, then Alex’s fabulous suggestion of how to ask for one, then nothing. Have I missed something? Have players the world over been using Mongeese to rack up plenty runs? Or are they actually impossible to use and akin to asking Tiger Woods to get out of a tricky situation using a Vileda Super Mop.
Players are sponsored by other brands so can’t use them Bert.